This roundtable is hosted by the Australian Centre on China in the World, and the Coral Bell School's Department of International Relations at The Australian National University
Anchored in President Xi Jinping’s vision of a ‘global community of shared future’, Beijing’s evolving approach to global order-building reflects both an outward-looking commitment to international cooperation and a strategic effort to reshape norms and influence worldwide. Increasingly, China is also presenting its own developmental experience as a universal model and positioning ‘Chinese solutions’ as viable responses to global challenges. This shift marks a significant departure from earlier, more inward-focused narratives, signalling China’s growing confidence in projecting its ideas onto the international stage.
What does this transformation mean in an era marked by geopolitical fragmentation, contested governance and shifting centres of power? Bringing together leading scholars of Chinese foreign policy, this roundtable critically examines the drivers, intentions and consequences of China’s global order-building initiatives. It also interrogates the tensions, contestations and contradictions embedded within China’s order-building ideas, narratives and practices.
Agenda
5-6pm - Reception in Atrium
6-7.30pm - Roundtable in Lecture Theatre 1 (in-person only)
Panel
Beverley Loke (Chair)
Dr Beverley Loke is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of International Relations at the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs, The Australian National University (ANU). She is also a Visiting Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, and an affiliate with the ANU Australian Centre on China in the World. Her research interests include the politics of great power responsibility and hegemonic ordering, China’s foreign policy, global knowledge production practices, and the international relations of the Indo-Pacific. She has published in journals such as the European Journal of International Relations, Review of International Studies, Australian Journal of International Affairs, China Quarterly and International Studies Review. She is also co-editor of the Routledge Book Series ‘Identity, Worldviews and Ideology in Global Politics’.
Xiaoyu Pu
Xiaoyu Pu is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Nevada, Reno. He is the author of Rebranding China: Contested Status Signaling in the Changing Global Order (Stanford University Press, 2019) and has published widely in leading journals, including International Security, International Affairs, and The Chinese Journal of International Politics. He was a Fellow with the Penn Project on the Future of U.S.–China Relations and a Public Intellectuals Program Fellow with the National Committee on U.S.–China Relations. He has held visiting fellowships at the Australian National University and the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) in Singapore. He received his PhD from The Ohio State University and completed postdoctoral training at Princeton University.
Astrid Nordin
Professor Astrid Nordin is the Lau Chair of Chinese International Relations in the Lau China Institute, before which she was professor of World Politics and Founding Director of Lancaster University China Centre. Her research develops critical conceptual tools that draw on Chinese and other global traditions of thought, and uses these to understand global challenges as they relate to China’s growing global role. She has lived in China for several years, and has significant experience collaborating with colleagues in the creative arts, media, and policy.
Guangyi Pan
Dr. Guangyi Pan is a Lecturer in International Political Studies at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, UNSW Canberra. His research primarily focuses on asymmetric politics, China's alliance/alignment policy, Sino-Soviet (Russia) relations, and the neoclassical realism of International Relations. Guangyi has published journal articles, media reports, and analytical pieces in areas of Indo-Pacific politics, Foreign Policy Analysis, and Cold War history. His recent articles appeared in International Affairs, International Relations of Asia-Pacific, Pacific Review, Chinese Journal of Political Science, Australian Journal of International Affairs and other journals. He is the author of The US Covert Operation in Poland in the 1980s (Nanjing University Press, 2023) and National Role Conception and Neoclassical Realism: A Synthetic Exploration into the Sino-Soviet Alignment (Routledge, 2025). He received his PhD in International Politics from UNSW Sydney in 2024. Previously, he studied at Nanjing University and worked at UNICEF China.
Hannah Bailey
Hannah Bailey is an Assistant Professor at the Carnegie Mellon Institute for Strategy & Technology (CMIST), where her research and teaching sit at the intersection of international relations and emerging technologies. Her work examines how authoritarian states, China in particular, develop and deploy emerging technologies for state-sponsored digital persuasion in the global public sphere, drawing on natural language processing, machine learning, and computer vision to analyse political communication at scale. She holds a DPhil from the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford.
Additional information:
Registration is required for this in-person event. If you require accessibility accommodations or a visitor Personal Emergency Evacuation Plan please email bell.marketing@anu.edu.au. Accessible parking spaces are available around campus should you require them.